Privacy

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Privacy has become one of the defining issue of the Information Age. CIS has received national recognition for its interdisciplinary and multi-angle examination of privacy, particularly as it relates to emerging technology.

Neal Cohen is a New York and English qualified lawyer in the Privacy & Security practice group at Perkins Coie LLP where he assists multinational organizations with their global data protection and privacy law compliance strategies. Previously, Neal was a research fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University where his research focused on the global convergence of data protection and privacy laws, and prior to joining Perkins Coie LLP, Neal spent several years practicing data protection and privacy law in the London office of White & Case LLP.

Chuck Cosson is Director, Legal Affairs, Privacy & Security, at T-Mobile US, based in Bellevue, WA. At T-Mobile, Chuck oversees privacy compliance programs and provides legal guidance on mobile Internet, location services, incident response, and other privacy, security, and business issues. Chuck spent 7 years at Microsoft leading that company’s public policy work on human rights, free expression, and child online safety. He has also worked in Washington, D.C.

Catherine Crump is an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. She litigates cases on many issues, from challenges to invasive government surveillance programs, to protecting the right to engage in political protest, to suing police officers for excessive force. Current cases include constitutional challenges to the government’s authority to engage in suspicionless searches of laptops at the international border and to its assertion that it can track the location of cell phones without a warrant.

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When FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced last week that he would eliminate the "fair play" rules known as Net neutrality, he took a step that some economists and technologists worry will eventually lead to the monopolization of Internet services in America. What, if any, impact would the elimination of Net neutrality rules have on consumer privacy? The answer, in short, is that consumers would simply be forced to pay more for it.

An enormous amount of attention has been paid to the oral argument before the Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States. The transcript provides tantalizing tea leaves as to whether the Court will find a protectable right to privacy in a cell phone subscriber’s location and many pundits seem to think the day went to Carpenter while I haven’t heard anyone touting a government homerun.

As I’ve been writing about networked information technologies as “tools,” it’s worth reiterating that metaphors of space are not entirely without value, including in areas of the law that derive from laws relating to real property. Having noted in multiple prior posts the weaknesses of spatial metaphors, here I discuss some of their common applications in ways that are productive. There are two particular applications of the physical space metaphor to online platforms and services that are interesting:

On October 10, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gave a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy about encryption. I have a lot to say about his remarks, so this will be a long post. Much of Rosenstein’s speech recycled the same old chestnuts that law enforcement’s been repeating about crypto for years. I’m happy to roast those chestnuts.

Imagine that a random car is periodically driving across your front yard, leaving tire treads and gouges on your otherwise pristine lawn. How would you handle it? You might set up a surveillance camera to capture an image of the license plate and driver and then share the image with the police. You might install a fence.

Arguing that a defendant’s conviction for website hacking should be overturned because legitimate, highly valuable security and privacy research commonly employs techniques that are essentially identical to what the defendant did and that such independent research is of great value to academics, government regulators and the public even when – often especially when — conducted without a website owner’s permission.

Arguing that the information publicly available on the NSA's Upstream program, combined with an understanding of how the Internet works, means plaintiff Wikimedia has met its burden of proving standing to challenge Upstream.

Arguing that if the court should not compel Apple to create software to enable unlocking and search of the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, it will jeopardize digital and personal security more generally.

"Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society Director of Privacy Albert Gidari agreed that blockchain is secure and Illinois’ move allows individuals to have better control over their government-issued ID.

“Who you are depends on who the government says you are,” Gidari said, “and this really changes that dynamic and gives you data portability.”

Gidari joked to not think of this as a dystopian future novel the likes of “A Brave New World,” but rather to think of it as a “better brave new world.”"

"According to Narayanan, even without trackers, it is safe to conclude that anonymity does not exist on the internet. Narayanan’s group previously demonstrated that almost all browsing history can be de-anonymized and traced to specific users. According to Narayanan, Edward Snowden’s leaks on the U.S. government’s surveillance programs revealed that cookies — small pieces of information stored by a website on a user’s computer — can be used to tie that history back to specific people."

Eight years ago, Barack Obama arrived in Washington pledging to reverse the dramatic expansion of state surveillance his predecessor had presided over in the name of fighting terrorism. Instead, the Obama administration saw the Bush era’s “collect it all” approach to surveillance become still more firmly entrenched. Meanwhile, the advanced spying technologies once limited to intelligence agencies have been gradually trickling down to local police departments.

Join Mozilla and Stanford CIS for the second installment in a series of conversations about government hacking. Information from our first event, discussing the upcoming changes to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41, are available at that event’s page here.

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Journalists are supposed to serve as “watchdogs” on the government. But how do they get access to the information they need to do that? In this episode, we talk to BuzzFeed lawyer Nabiha Syed about “freedom of information” laws — which are often the secret to getting government secrets.

Lecture held during the First International Congress of Fundamental Rights and Criminal Procedure in the Digital Age, organized by InternetLab in partnership with the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo.

Cryptography Fellow Riana Pfefferkorn gave a lecture titled "The American debate on surveillance and encryption".

If you attended a recent march to protest, wrote a check to the ACLU, or recently visited a politically leaning website, consider yourself an activist, says Stanford legal scholar Granick. Not only might the government be watching you, but your digital footprint could end up being visible to people and organizations you never imagined would care. Know your risks and take safety precautions, advises Granick, or don’t be surprised at the troubling outcome.